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Abstract

Multi-agent domains consisting of teams of agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial
environment offer challenging research opportunities. In this article, we introduce periodic
team synchronization (PTS) domains as time-critical environments in which agents act autonomously
with low communication, but in which they can periodically synchronize in a full-communication
setting. The two main contributions of this article are a flexible team agent structure and
a method for inter-agent communication in domains with unreliable, single-channel, low-bandwidth
communication. First, the novel team agent structure allows agents to capture and reason about
team agreements. We achieve collaboration between agents through the introduction of formations.
A formation decomposes the task space defining a set of roles. Homogeneous agents can flexibly
switch roles within formations, and agents can change formations dynamically, according to pre-defined
triggers to be evaluated at run-time. This flexibility increases the performance of the overall
team. Our teamwork structure further includes pre-planning for frequent situations. Second,
the novel communication method is designed for use during the low-communication periods in PTS
domains. It overcomes the obstacles to inter-agent communication in multi-agent environments with
unreliable, high-cost, low-bandwidth communication. We fully implemented both the flexible teamwork
structure and the communication method in the domain of simulated robotic soccer, and conducted
controlled empirical experiments to verify their effectiveness. In addition, our simulator team
made it to the semi-finals of the RoboCup-97 competition, in which 29 teams participated. It
achieved a total score of 67--9 over six different games, and successfully demonstrated its
flexible teamwork structure and inter-agent communication.

BibTeX Entry

@Article(AIJ99,
Author="Peter Stone and Manuela Veloso",
Title="Task Decomposition, Dynamic Role Assignment, and Low-Bandwidth Communication for Real-Time Strategic Teamwork",
Journal="Artificial Intelligence",
Year="1999",month="June",
volume="110",number="2",pages="241--273",
abstract={
Multi-agent domains consisting of teams of agents that
need to collaborate in an adversarial environment
offer challenging research opportunities. In this
article, we introduce periodic team
synchronization (PTS) domains as time-critical
environments in which agents act autonomously with low
communication, but in which they can periodically
synchronize in a full-communication setting. The two
main contributions of this article are a flexible team
agent structure and a method for inter-agent
communication in domains with unreliable,
single-channel, low-bandwidth communication. First,
the novel team agent structure allows agents to
capture and reason about team agreements. We achieve
collaboration between agents through the introduction
of formations. A formation decomposes the task
space defining a set of roles. Homogeneous
agents can flexibly switch roles within formations,
and agents can change formations dynamically,
according to pre-defined triggers to be evaluated at
run-time. This flexibility increases the performance
of the overall team. Our teamwork structure further
includes pre-planning for frequent situations.
Second, the novel communication method is designed for
use during the low-communication periods in PTS
domains. It overcomes the obstacles to inter-agent
communication in multi-agent environments with
unreliable, high-cost, low-bandwidth communication.
We fully implemented both the flexible teamwork
structure and the communication method in the domain
of simulated robotic soccer, and conducted controlled
empirical experiments to verify their effectiveness.
In addition, our simulator team made it to the
semi-finals of the RoboCup-97 competition, in
which 29 teams participated. It achieved a total score
of 67--9 over six different games, and successfully
demonstrated its flexible teamwork structure and
inter-agent communication.
},
wwwnote={<a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Papers/99aij/teamwork.html">HTML version</a>.},
)